Committee details

Equality Impact Assessment Panel

Purpose of committee

Terms of Reference:

Status

Operating as any panel, The Corporate Equality Impact
Assessment Panel does not need to be politically balanced or made
up of only Cabinet members.The Corporate Equality Impact
Assessment Panel has no formal decision-making powers and
may include any member of the Council (such as Deputy Cabinet
Members or Champions), officers, stakeholders, etc.

Meetings of the Corporate Equality Impact
Assessment Panel will be held in private in order to enable
early collective discussions on a wide range of options and issues
(within the identified scope of responsibilities).

Equality impact assessments and other reports presented to
the Corporate Equality Impact Assessment Panel will be
published. Further, and accordingly,
the provisions of the Access to Information Procedure Rules and of
the Cabinet Procedure Rules (Part 3 of the Council’s
Constitution) shall not apply unless expressly indicated to the
contrary.

Governance
context

The Corporate Equality Impact Assessment Panel operates within the council’s wider corporate
governance framework. It formally
reports to the Chief Executive who is empowered to refer issues to
either the Cabinet (all policies[1] except staffing ones) or
Corporate Committee (staffing policies only) as
appropriate. This power may, in turn,
be delegated to a Strategic Director or Director.

Strategic Directors oversee delivery of actions and
recommendations from the Panel.

Purpose

The Equality Act
places a statutory requirement on public authorities to adhere to
the three aims of the equality duty:

i.eliminate unlawful
discrimination, harassment and
victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the
Act;

ii.advance equality of
opportunitybetween people who
share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it;
and,

iii.foster good
relationsbetween people who
share a protected characteristic and people who do not share
it.

The protected characteristics covered by the Equality
Duty are:

i.
age;

ii.
disability;

iii.
gender reassignment;

iv.
marriage and civil partnership (but only in respect of eliminating
unlawful discrimination);

v.
pregnancy and maternity;

vi.
race – this includes ethnic or national origins, colour or
nationality;

vii.
religion or belief – this includes lack of belief;

viii.
sex; and,

ix.sexualorientation.

Although not covered
in law, the Council has committed to also consider socio-economic
issues as a further equality strand.

Within this context,
the Corporate Equality Impact Assessment Panel will manage and
steer the equality impact assessment process across the Council
by:

a.undertaking independent reviews of the
equality impact assessmentscarried out in relation to key council policies and
changes in policy;

b.providing advice and recommendations on
equality issues relating to the effectiveness of policies and
changes in policy arising out of the individual review;

c.reviewing general and specific
arrangements for equality impact assessments across the
council;

d.reviewing annual service and financial plans to help
minimise risk and maximise opportunities to strengthen work to
promote equality; and,

TheCorporate Equality Impact Assessment Panel
will be chaired by the Cabinet Member with responsibility for
equality and/or cohesion. The core
Panel members will be a mixture of elected members, partnership
representatives, voluntary sector and community representatives and
Council officers. The 2015/16 panel member composition is as
follows:

9 x Councillors,
Labour Group

1 x Councillor, Conservative Group

Director, Cooperative Business
Development

Head of Strategy and Equalities

1 x representative from Trade Unions
Committee

Experts with specialist skills or knowledge will be invited
to attend panel meetings as and when a specific need is
identified.

Meetings

The Panel will meet at least 10 times during the financial
year, April to March. The Forward Plan of meetings will be agreed
and published in April. Panelmeetings will be serviced by the Cooperative
Business Development Division (Policy, Equalities and
Performance).

Working
Arrangements

At each meeting the Panel will review three to four
policies or Equality Impact Assessments. The selection criteria are based upon the scale
and scope of the impact the policies might have on equalities
groups, socio economic factors and human rights. These will be policies that have been identified
as having a high or medium relevance to promote equality and
community cohesion, and eliminate discrimination. All proposals
going on to Cabinet for decision will need to have been subject to
an Equality Impact Assessment and considered by the Corporate EIA
panel.

The outcome of the review meeting and recommendations will
be recorded and submitted to the responsible Strategic Director and
lead officer for action. An update
period will be agreed to consider progress of any agreed
actions.

All papers relating to the EIA process will be retained in
line with the Council’s record management policy and
statutory equality requirements.

All members of the Corporate Equality Impact Assessment
Panel must attend equality impact assessment training. A programme of regular
training sessions will be provided with the aim of ensuring that no
member of the Corporate Equality Impact Assessment Panel attends
the meeting without having had the benefit of appropriate
training.

[1]This includes
all business activities such as strategies, functions, procedures,
practices, decisions, procurement, commissioning, workforce change,
and projects.